STEVE Baker MP cut the ribbon to officially open Cressex Community School last week – after two years of teaching and events at the £31m complex.

The Wycombe MP was joined by the school’s Head Boy, Joe Morris, and Head Girl, Iram Ramzan, as he declared the impressive building officially open.

The school in Holmers Farm Way was the first Co-operative Trust school in Buckinghamshire when it was unveiled in 2010. The building was funded under the previous Labour government’s One School Pathfinder programme.

Headteacher David Hood said at Friday’s ceremony: “When I first mentioned to staff and students that our opening ceremony was to be taking place, I met some understandably quizzical responses – ‘Aren’t we open yet?’

“Of course we have been open; and of course we have been enjoying all of the opportunities and benefits provided by our wonderful new building.

“But it is also important to mark certain key moments in the history of a community in a formal or official way.

“The move of Cressex Community School from accommodation that had served its time into state of the art premises is just such a moment.”

The school’s Chair of Governors, Dr Katy Simmons, told dignitaries including the Mayor of High Wycombe Cllr Chaudhry Shafique, that the futuristic complex, which boasts 'ground-source' heating and recycled rainwater for toilet flushing, was ‘more than a building’.

She said: “We started to work towards a new school ten years ago. At that time, the group of governors and Local Authority officers called our project 'Blue Skies High School'.

“We called it that because it was a vision of something that needed to happen. But it was a long way away.

“The words of American writer and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson summed up how we went about our task: 'Do not go where the path may lead, instead, go where there is no path - and leave a trail'.”

She then thanked the various organisations and individuals that helped secure government funding to deliver the impressive structure.

And borrowing a line from the recently re-elected US President Barack Obama, she added: “I hope you'll see from its short history that this isn't just a building. It embodies the aspirations, work and skills of many people over a long period of time.

“We wanted a school that would invite you in. We have that now and we now invite you to be part of the next chapter in our story.

“As someone else said just a day or so ago, the best is yet to come.”